Event Information

• Date/Time : Saturday, August 27, 2022 12:00PM - 2:00PM
• Location : Room 105, Dean H. Petersen Engineering Lab Bldg
• Pizza will be provided first in room 109, followed by seminar in room 105
• Email inquiries to chris.winstead@usu.edu

Does technology improve democracy?

In 2003, electronic voting systems in the Belgian federal election recorded an impossible number of votes for one candidate. Specifically, one candidate received a surplus of 4,096 votes. Was it due to voter fraud? Were the voting machines rigged by the manufacturer? Were hackers involved? There's no evidence of foul play, but the truth could be more unsettling. For someone experienced in computing, 4,096 is a familiar number. It is the numerical value of a single "bit" in a stored digital number. That "bit" is either 1 (contributing 4,096 to the total value), or 0. Somehow, a bit that was supposed to be zero was flipped in the counting systems, creating the phantom 4,096 votes. Scientists eventually determined that the best explanation was a single-bit upset -- a one-time random error -- caused by a cosmic ray. The Earth is continually bombarded by invisible cosmic rays that cause one-time computer glitches all over the world.

Since 2000, electronic voting systems have become increasingly important across the world. We might assume that computer technologies are inherently more accurate and trustworthy than older methods, but that is not necessarily true at a societal scale. In this workshop, we will discuss various glitches and bugs in voting technology. Altohugh random errors are quite rare in individual machines, on the scale of an entire nation -- with many millions of votes -- errors become a regular occurrence. As more and more electronic voting systems are installed, glitches and errors are documented with greater frequency. When average people encounter errors, they often suspect foul play where none exists.

We'll also see how changes in commnuication technology have made it more difficult to assess public opinion, leading to election surprises that further undermine public trust and feed conspiracy theories. We'll look at how bugs and design errors affect other critical systems, like finance and weapons, and the measures taken to improve them. Open-source design strategies, error-checking methods, redundant system design, and paper recounts can all serve to improve the security and trustability of our computerized institutions.

This event is put on by the FLUENT (FLorida-Utah Emerging Nano-Technologies) Research Group. To learn more about FLUENT, and the projects we do, please visit our website.